Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey called out by US lawmaker for mocking Congress hearing

Microblogging website, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was called out by a US lawmaker as he attempted to troll the Congress during a virtual hearing about misinformation on March 25. On Thursday (local time), American lawmakers grilled CEOs of Facebook, Google’s parent company Alphabet and Dorsey. In the first hearing since former US President Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol to hinder the Congress convened to certify the election victory of now President Joe Biden, the tensions were high.

During the heated hearing of Dorsey, Facebook Inc's Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet Inc were asked “yes or no” including whether their respective platforms bore any responsibility for the January 6 riot at the capitol building and if they understood the difference between the two words. However, expressing the frustration, Dorsey tweeted “?” with a poll asking users to vote “yes” or “no” during the hearing. While the poll has now received more than 95,400 votes, Democratic Representative Kathleen Rice called Dorsey out during the session.

Rice asked, “Mr. Dorsey, what is winning, yes or no, on your Twitter account poll?" To this, Twitter CEO replied that “yes” was winning. The democratic lawmaker then replied, “Your multi-tasking skills are quite impressive."

Zuckerberg and Pichai were also the witness to the joint hearing before the two subcommittees of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Throughout the hearing, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers tried to pin each teach CEO with questions needing only “yes” or “no” answers. The lawmakers also interrupted all three of them if they began answering longer answers. The main issues that were raised in the hearing including COVID-19 misinformation, harassment, hate speech and extremism.

Dorsey, Zuckerberg, Pichai defend companies

All three CEOs staunchly backed their companies on Thursday with the efforts platforms made to weed out the toxic content posted and circulated on services that have billions of users. Dorsey said, “I don’t think we should be the arbiters of truth and I don’t think the government should be either.” Democrats are laying the responsibility for the January 6 riot and misinformation regarding November presidential elections on social media. Rep. Mike Doyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat, told the CEOs that the riot “started and was nourished on your platforms.”

Image credits: AP/@jack-Twitter